I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a new and improved hairbrush constructed and arranged to minimize tangling and snarling and to lift and shape hair to each individual head.
II. Technological Problems and Prior Art
It is common knowledge today that a hairbrush comprising bristles whose outer ends terminate in a flat common plane has less hairbrushing effect than bristles whose ends form certain other configurations because a flat configuration of bristle ends is an inefficient way to penetrate into the body of hair growing from a head that has a curved shape from front to rear. It is necessary to first separate and lift the strands incrementally and then smooth the lifted strands as the brush moves across a person's head. In case all the bristles are stiff enough and long enough to penetrate completely to the scalp, they may cause damage to the skin of the head of the person whose hair is being brushed while lifting the strands. Also, long stiff bristles are not capable of smoothing the lifted strands. If the bristles are not long enough and/or stiff enough to penetrate into the depth of the hair, they fail to separate the strands, and the unbrushed hair strands near the scalp remain snarled and/or tangled. The aforesaid problems apply equally when bristles are mounted individually or when bristles extend in bunches from a base of a brush.
Some prior art developments in hairbrushes have provided bristles of different lengths. However, some of these prior art arrangements of bristles have been defective because longer bristles of low stiffness tend to buckle before reaching the hair root while shorter bristles of the same stiffness tangle with the hair. When stiffer bristles are used, even shorter stiffer bristles scrub the skin of the head of a person whose hair is being brushed and thus cause damage to the head skin. Other alleged improvements involve the combination of hair bristles of different materials, different lengths and/or different stiffness intermixed to provide different bristles with different characteristics, some of which penetrate the complete depth of the hair and others of which penetrate only a portion of the depth of hair. However, manufacturing hairbrushes having intermixed bristles of different physical structures or different materials represents a complicated inventory problem in the fabrication of hairbrushes.
The following patents disclose some interesting features that have been developed in hairbrushes prior to the present invention. As will be explained later, these developments still leave room for additional improvement in the hair brushing art.
U.S. Pat. No. 651,841 to Flemming discloses a method of manufacturing brushes with curved backs. In this patent, methods are provided for producing brushes whose free ends define any desired curved configuration such as brushes of serpentine, spherical, ellipsodial, cylindrical, or other curved form. In all of the embodiments of this patent, all of the bristles are of equal length extending from the base of the brush. Therefore, all of the brush bristles have the same penetrating effect into the depth of hair being brushed. Therefore, when the brushes produced by the method of this patent move across a person's head, all of the bristles either penetrate to the scalp to scratch the latter or fail to penetrate to a hair depth sufficient to avoid snarling or tangling. Hence, brushes produced by the Flemming method are incapable of performing the function of the brushes of the present invention that will be described in greater detail later.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,259,571 to Wiens discloses a shaving brush having soft bristles. The ends of the soft bristles, when straight, form an arcuate, convexly shaped, discontinuous surface in any cross-section of the brush. Such a brush structure may be suitable for applying shaving cream onto the face of a person desiring to shave. However, the brush resulting from the method of this invention is incapable of brushing hair on the scalp of an individual.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,393,635 to Mondy discloses an electric hairbrush whose bristles are of uniform length extending from a brush base that is curved convexly both in the direction of the length of the brush handle and transverse to the brush handle. Each of the bristles of such a brush is capable of entering the depth of hair that equals the depth of hair penetrated by every other bristle. Hence, all the bristles of the Mondy brush are either stiff enough to penetrate the hair to the scalp to scratch the latter during hairbrushing, or are soft enough to fail to penetrate into the lower depths of the hair so that the hair remains at least partly snarled and/or tangled after brushing.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,963,389 to Vardeman discloses an arrangement of bristles for a toothbrush. In this patent, the outer ends of the bristles form a concave discontinuous surface in the direction of the length of the toothbrush handle. While such a toothbrush is designed to provide ready penetration between adjacent teeth for the efficient cleaning of all cracks and crevices, such a toothbrush would not be suitable for brushing hair on the scalp of a human being.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,047,898 to Levite discloses a multi-use hairbrush provided with four different types of bristle ranging from fine flexible smoothing bristles on one side to coarse stiff combing bristles on the other side. In this hairbrush, two adjacent rows of bristles of each type extend parallel to one another along the length of the brush in the direction of the brush handle and gradually change in stiffness from pair to pair from said flexible smoothing bristles along one side edge of the brush to said stiff combing bristles along the other side edge of the brush. The necessity for fabricating a hairbrush having four different types of bristles renders the fabrication process awkward to say the least, because of the need to maintain an inventory of four different types of bristles.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,180,342 to Dietsch discloses a brush-comb. In this patented utensil, rows of bristles having the characteristics of brush bristles alternate with rows of teeth having the characteristics of teeth in a comb. The rows extend in the direction of the length of the handle of the utensil. The length of the bristles or teeth gradually decrease from a maximum length at a maximum distance from the utensil handle to a minimum length at the end of the utensil adjacent its handle. Brush-combs of this type are used particularly for grooming permanent wave coiffures, and are not suitable for the type of hairbrushing at which the present invention excels, as will be explained later.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,014,064 to Okazaki discloses a hairbrush comprising a plurality of tufts of bristles evenly and orderly distributed over the face portion of the brush. Each tuft consists of bristles of three different lengths. The bristles are divided into three rows in a manner such that the longest bristles account for the largest numerical portion of each tuft of bristles and the smaller sizes are of a correspondingly lesser amount in accordance with a predetermined proportion. The tufts extend obliquely from the base of the brush so that three oblique, parallel rows of tufts on one side of the longitudinal axis of the brush diverge from three oblique, parallel rows on the other side of the longitudinal axis of the brush. The ends of each length of bristle in each tuft lie in one or another of three flat, discontinuous planes so that when the brush moves across a person's head, each increment of hair is subjected to six intermittent brushings by six lines of tufts, each tuft having three bristles of different length.
In spite of the many variations in design and construction and arrangement of brush bristles as evidenced by the prior art patents just described, the prior art still lacked a hairbrush that provided suitable lifting of the entire thickness of the hair to fluff the hair combined with an ability to smooth the hair at the end of the brushing stroke.